I demonstrate that Bell's theorem is based on circular reasoning and thus a fundamentally flawed argument. It unjustifiably assumes the additivity of expectation values for dispersion-free states of contextual hidden variable theories for non-commuting observables involved in Bell-test experiments, which is tautologous to assuming the bounds of ±2 on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values. Its premises thus assume in a different guise the bounds of ±2 it sets out to prove. Once this oversight (...) is ameliorated from Bell's argument by identifying the impediment that leads to it and local realism is implemented correctly, the bounds on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values work out to be ±2√2 instead of ±2, thereby mitigating the conclusion of Bell's theorem. Consequently, what is ruled out by any of the Bell-test experiments is not local realism but the linear additivity of expectation values, which does not hold for non-commuting observables in any hidden variable theories to begin with. I also identify similar oversight in the GHZ variant of Bell's theorem, invalidating its claim of having found an inconsistency in the premisses of the argument by EPR for completing quantum mechanics. Conceptually, the oversight in both Bell's theorem and its GHZ variant traces back to the oversight in von Neumann's theorem against hidden variable theories identified by Grete Hermann in the 1930s. (shrink)

Bell-CHSH inequalities are trivial algebraic properties satisfied by each line of an Nx4 spreadsheet containing ±1 entries, thus it is surprising that their violation in some experiments allows us to speculate about the existence of non-local influences in nature and casts doubt on the existence of the objective external physical reality. Such speculations are rooted in incorrect interpretations of quantum mechanics and in a failure of local realistic hidden variable models to reproduce quantum (...) predictions for spin polarization correlation experiments (SPCE). In these models, one uses a counterfactual joint probability distribution of only pairwise measurable random variables (A, A′, B, B′) to prove Bell-CHSH inequalities. In SPCE, Alice and Bob, using 4 incompatible pairs of experimental settings, estimate imperfect correlations between clicks registered by their detectors. Clicks announce the detection of photons and are coded by ±1. Expectations of corresponding random variables—E (AB), E (AB′), E (A′B), and E (A′B′)—are estimated and compared with quantum predictions. These estimates significantly violate CHSH inequalities. Since variables (A, A′) and (B, B′) cannot be measured jointly, neither Nx4 spreadsheets nor a joint probability distribution of (A, A′, B, B′) exist, thus Bell-CHSH inequalities may not be derived. Nevertheless, imperfect correlations between clicks in SPCE may be explained in a locally causal way, if contextual setting-dependent parameters describing measuring instruments are correctly included in the description. The violation of Bell-CHSH inequalities may not therefore justify the existence of a spooky action at the distance, super-determinism, or speculations that an electron can be both here and a meter away at the same time. In this paper we review and rephrase several arguments proving that such conclusions are unfounded. Entangled photon pairs cannot be described as pairs of socks nor as pairs of fair dice producing in each trial perfectly correlated outcomes. Thus, the violation of inequalities confirms only that the measurement outcomes and ‘the fate of photons’ are not predetermined before the experiment is done. It does not allow for doubt regarding the objective existence of atoms, electrons, and other invisible elementary particles which are the building blocks of the visible world around us. (shrink)

I point out a sign mistake in the GHZ variant of Bell's theorem, invalidating the GHZ's claim that the premisses of the EPR argument are inconsistent for systems of more than two particles in entangled quantum states.

Mathematics equivalent to Bell's derivation of the inequalities, also allows a local hidden variables explanation for the correlation between distant measurements.

Contrary to Bell’s theorem it is demonstrated that with the use of classical probability theory the quantum correlation can be approximated. Hence, one may not conclude from experiment that all local hidden variable theories are ruled out by a violation of inequality result.

One of the Bell's assumptions in the original derivation of his inequalities was the hypothesis of locality, i.e., the absence of the in uence of two remote measuring instruments on one another. That is why violations of these inequalities observed in experiments are often interpreted as a manifestation of the nonlocal nature of quantum mechanics, or a refutation of a local realism. It is well known that the Bell's inequality was derived in its traditional form, (...) without resorting to the hypothesis of locality and without the introduction of hidden variables, the only assumption being that the probability distributions are nonnegative. This can therefore be regarded as a rigorous proof that the hypothesis of locality and the hypothesis of existence of the hidden variables not relevant to violations of Bell's inequalities. The physical meaning of the obtained results is examined. Physical nature of the violation of the Bell inequalities is explained under new EPR-B nonlocality postulate.We show that the correlations of the observables involved in the Bohm{Bell type experiments can be expressed as correlations of classical random variables. The revisited Bell type inequality in canonical notatons reads <AB>+<A′B>+<AB′>-<A′B′>≤6. (shrink)

The violation of Bell inequalities by quantum physical experiments disproves all relativistic micro causal, classically real models, short Local Realistic Models (LRM). Non-locality, the infamous “spooky interaction at a distance” (A. Einstein), is already sufficiently ‘unreal’ to motivate modifying the “realistic” in “local realistic”. This has led to many worlds and finally many minds interpretations. We introduce a simple many world model that resolves the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox. The model starts out as a classical (...) LRM, thus clarifying that the many worlds concept alone does not imply quantum physics. Some of the desired ‘non-locality’, e.g. anti-correlation at equal measurement angles, is already present, but Bell’s inequality can of course not be violated. A single and natural step turns this LRM into a quantum model predicting the correct probabilities. Intriguingly, the crucial step does obviously not modify locality but instead reality: What before could have still been a direct realism turns into modal realism. This supports the trend away from the focus on non-locality in quantum mechanics towards a mature structural realism that preserves micro causality. (shrink)

We show that the respective oversights in the von Neumann's general theorem against all hidden variable theories and Bell's theorem against their local-realistic counterparts are homologous. When latter oversight is rectified, the bounds on the CHSH correlator work out to be ±2√2 instead of ±2.

Why are quantum correlations so puzzling? A standard answer is that they seem to require either nonlocal influences or conspiratorial coincidences. This suggests that by embracing nonlocal influences we can avoid conspiratorial fine-tuning. But that’s not entirely true. Recent work, leveraging the framework of graphical causal models, shows that even with nonlocal influences, a kind of fine-tuning is needed to recover quantum correlations. This fine-tuning arises because the world has to be just so as to disable the use (...) of nonlocal influences to signal, as required by the no-signaling theorem. This places an extra burden on theories that posit nonlocal influences, such as Bohmian mechanics, of explaining why such influences are inaccessible to causal control. I argue that Everettian Quantum Mechanics suffers no such burden. Not only does it not posit nonlocal influences, it operates outside the causal models framework that was presupposed in raising the fine-tuning worry. Specifically, it represents subsystems with density matrices instead of random variables. This allows it to sidestep all the results (including EPR and Bell) that put quantum correlations in tension with causal models. However, this doesn’t mean one must abandon causal reasoning altogether in a quantum world. When decoherence is rampant and there’s no controlled entanglement, Everettian Quantum Mechanics licenses our continued use of standard causal models. When controlled entanglement is present---such as in Bell-type experiments---we can employ recently-proposed quantum causal models that are consistent with Everettian Quantum Mechanics. We never need invoke any kind of non-local influence or any kind of fine-tuning. (shrink)

Contextuality and entanglement are valuable resources for quantum computing and quantum information. Bell inequalities are used to certify entanglement; thus, it is important to understand why and how they are violated. Quantum mechanics and behavioural sciences teach us that random variables ‘measuring’ the same content (the answer to the same Yes or No question) may vary, if ‘measured’ jointly with other random variables. Alice’s and Bob’s raw data confirm Einsteinian non-signaling, but setting dependent experimental protocols are (...) used to create samples of coupled pairs of distant ±1 outcomes and to estimate correlations.Marginal expectations, estimated using these final samples, depend on distant settings. Therefore,a system of random variables ‘measured’ in Bell tests is inconsistently connected and it should be analyzed using a Contextuality- by-Default approach, what is done for the first time in this paper.The violation of Bell inequalities and inconsistent connectedness may be explained using a contextual locally causal probabilistic model in which setting dependent variables describing measuring instruments are correctly incorporated. We prove that this model does not restrict experimenters` freedom of choice which is a prerequisite of science. Contextuality seems to be the rule and not an exception; thus, it should be carefully tested. (shrink)

Bell inequalities are usually derived by assuming locality and realism, and therefore violations of the Bell-CHSH inequality are usually taken to imply violations of either locality or realism, or both. But, after reviewing an oversight by Bell, in the Corollary below we derive the Bell-CHSH inequality by assuming only that Bob can measure along vectors b and b' simultaneously while Alice measures along either a or a', and likewise Alice can measure along vectors a (...) and a' simultaneously while Bob measures along either b or b', without assuming locality. The violations of the Bell-CHSH inequality therefore only mean impossibility of measuring along b and b' simultaneously. (shrink)

Although quantum mechanics can accurately predict the probability distribution of outcomes in an ensemble of identical systems, it cannot predict the result of an individual system. All the local and global hidden variable theories attempting to explain individual behavior have been proved invalid by experiments (violation of Bell’s inequality) and theory. As an alternative, Schrodinger and others have hypothesized existence of free will in every particle which causes randomness in individual results. However, these free will theories (...) have failed to quantitatively explain the quantum mechanical results. In this paper, we take the clue from quantum biology to get the explanation of quantum mechanical distribution. Recently it was reported that mutations (which are quantum processes) in DNA of E. coli bacteria instead of being random were biased in a direction such that the chance of survival of the bacteria is increased. Extrapolating it, we assume that all the particles including inanimate fundamental particles have a will and that is biased to satisfy the collective goals of the ensemble. Using this postulate, we mathematically derive the correct spin probability distribution without using quantum mechanical formalism (operators and Born’s rule) and exactly reproduce the quantum mechanical spin correlation in entangled pairs. Using our concept, we also mathematically derive the form of quantum mechanical wave function of free particle which is conventionally a postulate of quantum mechanics. Thus, we prove that the origin of quantum mechanical results lies in the will (or consciousness) of the objects biased by the collective goal of ensemble or universe. This biasing by the group on individuals can be called as “coherence” which directly represents the extent of life present in the ensemble. So, we can say that life originates out of establishment of coherence in a group of inanimate particles. (shrink)

In this short survey article, I discuss Bell’s theorem and some strategies that attempt to avoid the conclusion of non-locality. I focus on two that intersect with the philosophy of probability: (1) quantum probabilities and (2) superdeterminism. The issues they raised not only apply to a wide class of no-go theorems about quantum mechanics but are also of general philosophical interest.

Bell-type inequalities are proven using oversimplified probabilistic models and/or counterfactual definiteness (CFD). If setting-dependent variables describing measuring instruments are correctly introduced, none of these inequalities may be proven. In spite of this, a belief in a mysterious quantum nonlocality is not fading. Computer simulations of Bell tests allow people to study the different ways in which the experimental data might have been created. They also allow for the generation of various counterfactual experiments’ outcomes, such as repeated (...) or simultaneous measurements performed in different settings on the same “photon-pair”, and so forth. They allow for the reinforcing or relaxing of CFD compliance and/or for studying the impact of various “photon identification procedures”, mimicking those used in real experiments. Data samples consistent with quantum predictions may be generated by using a specific setting-dependent identification procedure. It reflects the active role of instruments during the measurement process. Each of the setting-dependent data samples are consistent with specific setting-dependent probabilistic models which may not be deduced using non-contextual local realistic or stochastic hidden variables. In this paper, we will be discussing the results of these simulations. Since the data samples are generated in a locally causal way, these simulations provide additional strong arguments for closing the door on quantum nonlocality. (shrink)

Bell’s theorem has fascinated physicists and philosophers since his 1964 paper, which was written in response to the 1935 paper of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. Bell’s theorem and its many extensions have led to the claim that quantum mechanics and by inference nature herself are nonlocal in the sense that a measurement on a system by an observer at one location has an immediate effect on a distant entangled system. Einstein was repulsed by such “spooky action at (...) a distance” and was led to question whether quantum mechanics could provide a complete description of physical reality. In this paper I argue that quantum mechanics does not require spooky action at a distance of any kind and yet it is entirely reasonable to question the assumption that quantum mechanics can provide a complete description of physical reality. The magic of entangled quantum states has little to do with entanglement and everything to do with superposition, a property of all quantum systems and a foundational tenet of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

We humans are natural-born engineers. As such, we model after machines not only isolated, naturally occurring systems, but also the basic laws of physics, sharing with machines a local-evolution-of-state `grammar'. However, previous work by the author casts doubt upon this mechanistic paradigm, suggesting that it is to blame for the stubbornness of many open problems in physics. Simple experiments are therefore proposed to identify `non-machines'. In one experiment, `non mechanistic correlations' in the spirit of Bell are sought (...) in a pair of separated but previously coupled (macroscopic) chaotic systems. In another it is tested whether chaotic systems could fuzzily `remember their future' in the sense that a future binary perturbation applied to them could be inferred from their present behavior with probability$>1/2$. Chaotic systems are chosen as candidates because the long-time application of their (deterministic) mechanistic description is conceptually groundless: All scales are significant and mutually coupled in that regime, down to scales governed by QM, yet the quantum-classical transition remains inexplicable---if only due to the measurement problem. Similarly for non-deterministic chaotic systems, modeled as such purely for defying a short-time deterministic mechanistic description. Should a non mechanistic signature be found in such simple systems, the implications for science as a whole and life sciences in particular cannot be overstated. (shrink)

Recent experiments allowed concluding that Bell-type inequalities are indeed violated thus it is important to understand what it means and how can we explain the existence of strong correlations between outcomes of distant measurements. Do we have to announce that: Einstein was wrong, Nature is nonlocal and nonlocal correlations are produced due to the quantum magic and emerge, somehow, from outside space-time? Fortunately such conclusions are unfounded because if supplementary parameters describing measuring instruments are correctly incorporated in (...) a theoretical model then Bell-type inequalities may not be proven .We construct a simple probabilistic model explaining these correlations in a locally causal way. In our model measurement outcomes are neither predetermined nor produced in irreducibly random way. We explain in detail why, contrary to the general belief; an introduction of setting dependent parameters does not restrict experimenters’ freedom of choice. Since the violation of Bell-type inequalities does not allow concluding that Nature is nonlocal and that quantum theory is complete thus the Bohr-Einstein quantum debate may not be closed. The continuation of this debate is not only important for a better understanding of Nature but also for various practical applications of quantum phenomena. (shrink)

In quantum mechanics, the wavefunction predicts probabilities of possible measurement outcomes, but not which individual outcome is realised in each run of an experiment. This suggests that it describes an ensemble of states with different values of a hidden variable. Here, we analyse this idea with reference to currently known theorems and experiments. We argue that the ψ-ontic/epistemic distinction fails to properly identify ensemble interpretations and propose a more useful definition. We then show that all local ψ-ensemble (...) interpretations which reproduce quantum mechanics violate Statistical Independence. Theories with this property are commonly referred to as superdeterministic or retrocausal. Finally, we explain how this interpretation helps make sense of some otherwise puzzling phenomena in quantum mechanics, such as the delayed choice experiment, the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb detector, and the Extended Wigner's Friends Scenario. (shrink)

Non-commuting quantities and hidden parameters – Wave-corpuscular dualism and hidden parameters – Local or nonlocal hidden parameters – Phase space in quantum mechanics – Weyl, Wigner, and Moyal – Von Neumann’s theorem about the absence of hidden parameters in quantum mechanics and Hermann – Bell’s objection – Quantum-mechanical and mathematical incommeasurability – Kochen – Specker’s idea about their equivalence – The notion of partial algebra – Embeddability of a qubit into a bit – Quantum (...) computer is not Turing machine – Is continuality universal? – Diffeomorphism and velocity – Einstein’s general principle of relativity – „Mach’s principle“ – The Skolemian relativity of the discrete and the continuous – The counterexample in § 6 of their paper – About the classical tautology which is untrue being replaced by the statements about commeasurable quantum-mechanical quantities – Logical hidden parameters – The undecidability of the hypothesis about hidden parameters – Wigner’s work and и Weyl’s previous one – Lie groups, representations, and psi-function – From a qualitative to a quantitative expression of relativity − psi-function, or the discrete by the random – Bartlett’s approach − psi-function as the characteristic function of random quantity – Discrete and/ or continual description – Quantity and its “digitalized projection“ – The idea of „velocity−probability“ – The notion of probability and the light speed postulate – Generalized probability and its physical interpretation – A quantum description of macro-world – The period of the as-sociated de Broglie wave and the length of now – Causality equivalently replaced by chance – The philosophy of quantum information and religion – Einstein’s thesis about “the consubstantiality of inertia ant weight“ – Again about the interpretation of complex velocity – The speed of time – Newton’s law of inertia and Lagrange’s formulation of mechanics – Force and effect – The theory of tachyons and general relativity – Riesz’s representation theorem – The notion of covariant world line – Encoding a world line by psi-function – Spacetime and qubit − psi-function by qubits – About the physical interpretation of both the complex axes of a qubit – The interpretation of the self-adjoint operators components – The world line of an arbitrary quantity – The invariance of the physical laws towards quantum object and apparatus – Hilbert space and that of Minkowski – The relationship between the coefficients of -function and the qubits – World line = psi-function + self-adjoint operator – Reality and description – Does a „curved“ Hilbert space exist? – The axiom of choice, or when is possible a flattening of Hilbert space? – But why not to flatten also pseudo-Riemannian space? – The commutator of conjugate quantities – Relative mass – The strokes of self-movement and its philosophical interpretation – The self-perfection of the universe – The generalization of quantity in quantum physics – An analogy of the Feynman formalism – Feynman and many-world interpretation – The psi-function of various objects – Countable and uncountable basis – Generalized continuum and arithmetization – Field and entanglement – Function as coding – The idea of „curved“ Descartes product – The environment of a function – Another view to the notion of velocity-probability – Reality and description – Hilbert space as a model both of object and description – The notion of holistic logic – Physical quantity as the information about it – Cross-temporal correlations – The forecasting of future – Description in separable and inseparable Hilbert space – „Forces“ or „miracles“ – Velocity or time – The notion of non-finite set – Dasein or Dazeit – The trajectory of the whole – Ontological and onto-theological difference – An analogy of the Feynman and many-world interpretation − psi-function as physical quantity – Things in the world and instances in time – The generation of the physi-cal by mathematical – The generalized notion of observer – Subjective or objective probability – Energy as the change of probability per the unite of time – The generalized principle of least action from a new view-point – The exception of two dimensions and Fermat’s last theorem. (shrink)

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction; de Broglie's paradox.; Quantum theory of distant particles; The EPR paradox; Einstein locality and Bell's inequality; Recent research on Bell's inequality; General consequences of Einstein locality; Nonloeality and relativity; Time-symmetric theories; The Bohm-Aharonov hypothesis; Experiments on Einstein locality; Reduction of the wave packet; Measurements, reality and consciousness; Conclusions.

In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) originated the famous “EPR paradox” [1]. This argument concerns two spatially separated particles which have both perfectly correlated positions and momenta, as is predicted possible by quantum mechanics. The EPR paper spurred investigations into the nonlocality of quantum mechanics, leading to a direct challenge of the philosophies taken for granted by most physicists.The EPR conclusion was based on the assumption of local realism, and thus the EPR argument pinpoints a contradiction (...) between local realism and the completeness of quantum mechanics. Einstein’s 1927 gedanken experiment by using the probability representation of quantum states explained successfully. (shrink)

The paper discusses this year’s Nobel Prize in physics for experiments of entanglement “establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science” in a much wider, including philosophical context legitimizing by the authority of the Nobel Prize a new scientific area out of “classical” quantum mechanics relevant to Pauli’s “particle” paradigm of energy conservation and thus to the Standard model obeying it. One justifies the eventual future theory of quantum gravitation as belonging to (...) the newly established quantum information science. Entanglement, involving non-Hermitian operators for its rigorous description, non-unitarity as well as nonlocal and superluminal physical signals “spookily” (by Einstein’s flowery epithet) synchronizing and transferring some nonzero action at a distance, can be considered to be quantum gravity so that its local counterpart to be Einstein’s gravitation according to general relativity therefore pioneering an alternative pathway to quantum gravitation different from the “secondary quantization” of the Standard model. So, the experiments of entanglement once they have been awarded by the Nobel Prize launch particularly the relevant theory of quantum gravitation grounded on “quantum information science” thus granted to be nonclassical quantum mechanics in the shared framework of the generalized quantum mechanics obeying rather quantum-information conservation than only energy conservation. The concept of “dark phase” of the universe naturally linked to the very well confirmed “dark matter” and “dark energy” and opposed to its “light phase” inherent to classical quantum mechanics and the Standard model obeys quantum-information conservation, after which reversible causality or the mutual transformation of energy and information are valid. The mythical Big Bang after which energy conservation holds universally is to be replaced by an omnipresent and omnitemporal medium of decoherence of the dark and nonlocal phase into the light and local phase. The former is only an integral image of the latter and borrowed in fact rather from religion than from science. Physical, methodological and proper philosophical conclusions follow from that paradigm shift heralded by this year’s Nobel Prize in physics. For example, the scientific theory of thinking should originate from the dark phase of the universe, as well: probably only approximately modeled by neural networks physically belonging to the light phase thoroughly. A few crucial philosophical sequences follow from the break of Pauli’s paradigm: (1) the establishment of the “dark” phase of the universe as opposed to its “light” phase, only to which the Cartesian dichotomy of “body” and “mind” is valid; (2) quantum information conservation as relevant to the dark phase, furthermore generalizing energy conservation as to its light phase, productively allowing for physical entities to appear “ex nihilo”, i.e., from the dark phase, in which energy and time are yet inseparable from each other; (3) reversible causality as inherent to the dark phase; (4) the interpretation of gravitation only mathematically: as an interpretation of the incompleteness of finiteness to infinity, for example, following the Gödel dichotomy (“either contradiction or incompleteness”) about the relation of arithmetic to set theory; (5) the restriction of the concept of hierarchy only to the light phase; (6) the commensurability of both physical extremes of a quantum and the universe as a whole in the dark phase obeying quantum information conservation and akin to Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophical and theological worldview. (shrink)

The paper argues that on three out of eight possible hypotheses about the EPR experiment we can construct novel and realistic decision problems on which (a) Causal Decision Theory and Evidential Decision Theory conflict (b) Causal Decision Theory and the EPR statistics conflict. We infer that anyone who fully accepts any of these three hypotheses has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. Finally, we extend the original construction to show that anyone who gives any of the three hypotheses any (...) non-zero credence has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. However, we concede that no version of the Many Worlds Interpretation (Vaidman, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 2014) gives rise to the conflicts that we point out. (shrink)

The monistic worldview aims at a uniform description of nature based on scientific models. Quantum physical systems are mutually part of the other quantum physical systems. An aperture distributes the subsystems and the wave front in all possible ways. The system only takes one of the possible paths, as measurements show. Conclusion from Bell's theorem: Before the quantum physical measurement, there is no point-like location in the universe where all the information that explains the measurement is (...) available. Distributed information is possible. Movement of the particle and measuring process are deterministic. The oscillation between location uncertainty and momentum uncertainty leads photons to determine their own location at short intervals. The uncertainty principle focuses the systems. The fields of the surrounding matter influence the location of the new formation. The effect of all fields is based on a common mechanism. (shrink)

We comment some recent results obtained by using a Clifford bare bone skeleton of quantum mechanics in order to formulate the conclusion that quantum mechanics has its origin in the logic, and relates conceptual entities. Such results touch directly the basic problem about the structure of our cognitive and conceptual dynamics and thus of our mind. The problem of exploring consciousness results consequently to be strongly linked. This is the reason because studies on quantum mechanics applied to (...) this matter are so important for neurologists and psychologists. Under this profile we present some experimental results showing violation of Bell inequality during the MBTI test in investigation of C.V. Jung’s theory of personality. (shrink)

This paper shows how the classical finite probability theory (with equiprobable outcomes) can be reinterpreted and recast as the quantum probability calculus of a pedagogical or toy model of quantum mechanics over sets (QM/sets). There have been several previous attempts to develop a quantum-like model with the base field of ℂ replaced by ℤ₂. Since there are no inner products on vector spaces over finite fields, the problem is to define the Dirac brackets and the probability calculus. (...) The previous attempts all required the brackets to take values in ℤ₂. But the usual QM brackets <ψ|ϕ> give the "overlap" between states ψ and ϕ, so for subsets S,T⊆U, the natural definition is <S|T>=|S∩T| (taking values in the natural numbers). This allows QM/sets to be developed with a full probability calculus that turns out to be a non-commutative extension of classical Laplace-Boole finite probability theory. The pedagogical model is illustrated by giving simple treatments of the indeterminacy principle, the double-slit experiment, Bell's Theorem, and identical particles in QM/Sets. A more technical appendix explains the mathematics behind carrying some vector space structures between QM over ℂ and QM/Sets over ℤ₂. (shrink)

Non-locality is one of the great mysteries of quantum mechanics (qm). There is a new realist interpretation of qm on the table whose notion of time incorporates both of McTaggart's A-series and B-series. In this philosophically motivated interpretation there is no fact of the matter as to whether the 'now' of one system is the 'now' of another system, until measurement. But this reproduces the idea that the spins of a Bell pair of electrons do not become definite (...) 'until' measurement. And this almost trivially allows for non-locality. (shrink)

This book is devoted to the presentation of the new quantum mechanical formalism based on the probability representation of quantum states. In the 20s and 30s it became evident that some properties in quantum mechanics can be assigned only to the quantum mechanical system, but not necessarily to its constituents. This led Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) to their remarkable 1935 paper where they concluded that quantum mechanics is not a complete theory of nature (EPR (...) paradox). In order to avoid the contradiction which arises from instantaneous action at a distance mentioned above we introduce an extension of the canonical relativity by using measure algebra of physical events in Minkowski space-time. The canonical QM formalism is extended by additional new postulate of EPRB nonlocality for continuous and discrete observables, chapter I. The postulate of EPRB nonlocality is supported by new quantum mechanical formalism based on the probability representation of quantum states. Chapter II is devoted to the new quantum mechanical formalism based on the probability representation of quantum states. Chapter III is devoted to the Einstein's 1927 gedanken experiment resolution. Chapter IV is devoted to the EPR paradox resolution. Chapter V is devoted to the EPR-B paradox resolution. Chapter VI is devoted to the Schrödinger's cat (measured spin) paradox resolution. Chapter VII is devoted to the Bell inequalities revisited. Remind that the canonical arguments which were presented by many authors, namely, that violations of Bell type inequalities signal us that the classical Kolmogorovian model of probability is inapplicable to quantum phenomena. We claimed that the canonical assumption, under which Bell type inequalities were derived, is not supported by real physical nature of the EPRB experiments. The fundamental physical nature violations of the canonical Bell type inequalities explained by Postulate of EPR-Nonlocality and Heisenberg noise-disturbance uncertainty relations. (shrink)

What can be more fascinating than experimental metaphysics, to quote one of Abner Shimony’s enlightening expressions? Bell inequalities are at the heart of the study of nonlocality. I present a list of open questions, organised in three categories: fundamental; linked to experiments; and exploring nonlocality as a resource. New families of inequalities for binary outcomes are presented.

Amid the wide variety of interpretations of quantum mechanics, the notion of a fully coherent ontological interpretation has seen a promising evolution over the last few decades. Despite this progress, however, the old dualistic categorical constraints of subjectivity and objectivity, correlate with the metrically restricted definition of local and global, have remained largely in place – a reflection of the broader, persistent inheritance of these comfortable strictures throughout the evolution of modern science. If one traces this inheritance back (...) to its ancient roots in Plato and Aristotle, it is clear that the coherence, scientific utility, and historical durability of the various natural philosophies that followed have been directly proportional to their commitment, tacit or explicit, to object-oriented realism. As Simondon might put it, it is a commitment to the primacy of individuated substance over the process of individuation. For Whitehead, it is the misplaced assimilation of becoming to being, of potentiality to actuality. Quantum mechanics has challenged this commitment with a combined breadth and depth of force that far exceeds any other theory in the history of science. The theory’s objectively demonstrable empirical application is manifest only by way of a fundamentally subjective, context-dependent mechanism of measurement. More compelling still, actual system states are always actualizations of locally contextualized yet globally conditioned potential system states, such that “globally objective” reality is no longer merely the object of local measurement, but also its product. Thus, any coherent, ontological interpretation of quantum theory must include a conceptual framework by which objectivity and subjectivity, actuality and potentiality, global and local, being and becoming, individuated fact and process of individuation, are no longer understood as merely epistemic, mutually exclusive category pairs descriptive of an already extant, closed reality – but rather as mutually implicative ontological categories explicative of an ontogenetic, open reality-in-process. (shrink)

We discuss models that attempt to provide an explanation for the violation of Bell inequalities at a distance in terms of hidden influences. These models reproduce the quantum correlations in most situations, but are restricted to produce local correlations in some configurations. The argument presented in (Bancal et al. Nat Phys 8:867, 2012) applies to all of these models, which can thus be proved to allow for faster-than-light communication. In other words, the signalling character of these models (...) cannot remain hidden. (shrink)

In this essay a quantum-dualistic, perspectival and synchronistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is further developed in which the classical world-from-decoherence which is perceived (decoherence) and the perceived world-in-consciousness which is classical (collapse) are not necessarily identified. Thus, Quantum Reality or "{\it unus mundus}" is seen as both i) a physical non-perspectival causal Reality where the quantum-to-classical transition is operated by decoherence, and as ii) a quantum linear superposition of all classical psycho-physical perspectival Realities which are (...) governed by synchronicity as well as causality (corresponding to classical first-person observes who actually populate the world). This interpretation is termed the Nietzsche-Jung-Pauli interpretation and is a re-imagining of the Wigner-von Neumann interpretation which is also consistent with some reading of Bohr's quantum philosophy. (shrink)

Using a ‘reformulation of Bell’s theorem’, Waegell and McQueen (2020) argue that any empirically adequate theory that is local and does not involve retro-causation or fine-tuning must be a many-worlds theory. They go on to analyze several prominent many-worlds interpretations and conclude that non-separable many-worlds theories whose ontology is given by the wavefunction involve superluminal causation, while separable many-worlds theories (e.g. Waegell, 2021; Deutsch and Hayden 2000) do not. I put forward three claims. (A) I challenge their argument (...) for relying on a non-trivial, unquestioned assumption about elements of reality which allows Healey’s approach (Healey, 2017b) to evade their claim. In an attempt to respond to (A), Waegell and McQueen may restrict their claim to theories which satisfy such an assumption, however, I also argue that (B) their argument fails to prove even the so weakened claim, as exemplified by theories that are both non-separable and local. Finally, (C) by arguing for the locality of the decoherence-based Everettian approach (Wallace, 2012) I refute Waegell and McQueen’s claim that wavefunction-based ontologies, and more generally non-separable ontologies, involve superluminal causation. I close with some doubtful remarks about separable Everettian interpretations as compared to non-separable ones. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to demonstrate how the historical debate between materialism and idealism, in the field of Philosophy, extends, in new clothes, to the field of Quantum Physics characterized by realism and anti-realism. For this, we opted for a debate, also historical, between the realism of Albert Einstein, for whom reality exists regardless of the existence of the knowing subject, and Niels Bohr, for whom we do not have access to the ultimate reality of the matter, (...) unless conditioning it to the existence of an observer endowed with rationality, position adopted in the Interpretation of Complementarity – posture that was expanded in 1935 when Bohr assumed a “relationalist” conception, according to which the quantum state is defined by the relationship between the quantum object and the entire measuring device. This is an extremely important debate, as it further consolidates the results of nascent Quantum Mechanics, guaranteeing Bohr the leadership of the orthodoxy based on the interpretation of complementarity. Here, when dealing with Quantum Theory, we will not make any distinction between the terms Quantum Physics, Quantum Theory or Quantum Mechanics. The entire discussion will be held under the name “Quantum Theory”. Theory that tries to analyze and describe the behavior of physical systems of reduced dimensions, close to the sizes of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. We hope that the reader will appreciate the genius of these two titans in this field of Physics when they magnificently formulate the arguments that support the object of their defenses. (shrink)

It is difficult to extract reliable criteria for causal locality from the limited ingredients found in textbook quantum theory. In the end, Bell humbly warned that his eponymous theorem was based on criteria that “should be viewed with the utmost suspicion.” Remarkably, by stepping outside the wave-function paradigm, one can reformulate quantum theory in terms of old-fashioned configuration spaces together with ‘unistochastic’ laws. These unistochastic laws take the form of directed conditional probabilities, which turn out to provide (...) a hospitable foundation for encoding microphysical causal relationships. This unistochastic reformulation provides quantum theory with a simpler and more transparent axiomatic foundation, plausibly resolves the measurement problem, and deflates various exotic claims about superposition, interference, and entanglement. Making use of this reformulation, this paper introduces a new principle of causal locality that is intended to improve on Bell's criteria, and shows directly that systems that remain at spacelike separation cannot exert causal influences on each other, according to that new principle. These results therefore lead to a general hidden-variables interpretation of quantum theory that is arguably compatible with causal locality. (shrink)

We introduce a realist, unextravagant interpretation of quantum theory that builds on the existing physical structure of the theory and allows experiments to have definite outcomes but leaves the theory’s basic dynamical content essentially intact. Much as classical systems have specific states that evolve along definite trajectories through configuration spaces, the traditional formulation of quantum theory permits assuming that closed quantum systems have specific states that evolve unitarily along definite trajectories through Hilbert spaces, and our interpretation (...) extends this intuitive picture of states and Hilbert-space trajectories to the more realistic case of open quantum systems despite the generic development of entanglement. We provide independent justification for the partial-trace operation for density matrices, reformulate wave-function collapse in terms of an underlying interpolating dynamics, derive the Born rule from deeper principles, resolve several open questions regarding ontological stability and dynamics, address a number of familiar no-go theorems, and argue that our interpretation is ultimately compatible with Lorentz invariance. Along the way, we also investigate a number of unexplored features of quantum theory, including an interesting geometrical structure—which we call subsystem space—that we believe merits further study. We conclude with a summary, a list of criteria for future work on quantum foundations, and further research directions. We include an appendix that briefly reviews the traditional Copenhagen interpretation and the measurement problem of quantum theory, as well as the instrumentalist approach and a collection of foundational theorems not otherwise discussed in the main text. (shrink)

This paper addresses a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, i.e. superdeterminism. In short, superdeterminism i) takes the world to be fundamentally deterministic, ii) postulates hidden variables, and iii) contra Bell, saves locality at the cost of violating the principle of statistical independence. Superdeterminism currently enjoys little support in the physics and philosophy communities. Many take it to posit the ubiquitous occurrence of hard-to-digest conspiratorial and coincidental events; others object that violating the principle of statistical independence implies the death (...) of the scientific methodology. In this paper, we offer a defense to these and other objections. To counter the conspiracy objection, we draw upon the philosophical literature on time travel, and conclude that the picture of the world offered by the superdeterminist does not need to be particularly surprising or conspiratorial. We then move on to other recent objections, in particular those that focus on the methodology of science and the nature of the physical laws compatible with superdeterminism. A key ingredient of our arguments is that the principle of statistical independence may be violated in theory, but valid for practical purposes. Our overarching goal is to offer a defense of superdeterminism with respect to its main objections, so that it can earn its keep as a legitimate contender among the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

If you have enjoyed any of the 7 (seven) other books I have published over 20 years, including literally thousands of pages of mathematical and topological concepts, Python programs and conceptually expanding papers, please consider buying this book for $20.00 on google play books. -/- Introduction: -/- Though the following pages provide extensive exposition and dedicated descriptions of the phenomenological velocity formulas, theory and mystery, I thought it appropriate to write this introduction as a partial explanation for what phenomenal velocity (...) is, and describe, briefly its theory and applications. Phenomenological Velocity is a method for solving for something that ought cancel out with itself, but there are specific implicit forms for this thing that, “ought cancel out with itself,” namely the Lorentz coefficient ought cancel out with itself when applied to the height of a cone derived from the difference between the circumferences of two circles applied to the Pythagorean Theorem, or, more generally, the height implied by application of the Pythagorean theorem to the difference between two arc lengths’ equaling a third arc length. These difference equations are essential to conceptualizing differentiation, and in these further chapters, I demonstrate that the phenomenological velocity is, indeed the conditional derivative in the chapter, “Conditional Integral of Phenomenological Velocity.” The phenomenological velocity algebraic solution to the velocity within the Lorentz coefficient when applied to the height function in such a way that it ought cancel out with itself is both constructive mathematics and it employs the concept of, “bracketing,” - first introduced by Edmund Husserl in his writings on the phenomenological reduction. Phenomenological Velocity’s algebraic solution from the difference between two arc lengths applied to the Pythagorean Theorem to solve for a theoretical height (which is a projected distance in space), employs bracketing, because we, “set aside,” the existence of an undefined solution, namely due to the presence of necessitated complex analytical forms by the architecture of the equation, or the “mathetecture,” of the algebraic form. -/- With respect to theology, the phenomenological velocity is somehow symbolic of the creation itself; symbolic of creation due to the fact that we find the canceling out of the Lorentz coefficient as, “impotent,” non-existent or non-effecting to the mathetecture of the height function. However, via the modus-ponens work around to phenomenological velocity, which in itself does not require the complex field, but embeds implied complex field solutions to the equation while maintaining logical consistency, we find existence from non-existence. This is directly linguistically applicable to the concept of the big-bang, the resurrection of Yeshua the Messiah, and opens analogies for us to draw relationships between the, “fall,” of Adam and Eve as the generation of error, or the introduction of paradox, as we see the phallus representing paradox topologically. -/- The phenomenological velocity is a gestalt concept, relevant to cosmology, because we find that it is the perfect language-form for discussing dark matter. It does, however, require the reader to re-conceive or re-frame rather, some of the fundamental aspects of assumed physical reality like time, experience, solidity of dark matter, etc. We find the hidden dimension of phenomenological velocity to have been an overlooked aspect of mathematical physics by the researchers of Bell’s theorem and undoubtedly a host of other theorems. Thus, raising awareness about the real existence and necessitated reality of phenomenological velocity is in no way an endeavor deserving further procrastination by the scientific community, for doing so would be intellectually dishonest and further the propagation of incomplete or misleading theories on reality. -/- This work details how the Lorentz coefficient, when applied to the height of a cone in such a way as to cancel out with itself, permits the velocity variable to have a solution to it anyway, even though it ought cancel out with itself. This mathe-tecture, so to speak has consequences for complex analysis, and pave the way for, "transcendental relativity," building an adaptive framework for consciousness and physical reality. (shrink)

The demonstration of a loophole-free violation of Bell's inequality by Hensen et al. (2015) leads to the inescapable conclusion that timelessness and abstractness exist alongside space-time. This finding is in full agreement with the triple-aspect monism of reality, with mathematical Platonism, free will and the eventual emergence of a scientific morality.

After identifying in Part I [1] a conceptual confusion (TCC), a Reality preconception (TRP1), and a fallacious dichotomy (TFD), the famous EPR/EPRB [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] argument for correlated ‘particles’ is now studied in the light of the Ontic Probability Interpretation of Quantum Theory (QT/TOPI). Another Reality preconception (TRP2) is found, showing that EPR used and ignored QT predictions in a single paralogism. Employing TFD and TRP2, EPR unveiled a contradiction veiled in its premises. By removing nonlocality from (...) QT’s Ontology [1] by fiat, EPR preordained its incompleteness. The Petitio Principii fallacy was at work from the outset. Einstein surmised the proper solution to his incompleteness/nonlocality dilemma in 1949 [7], but never abandoned his philosophical stance [8]. It is concluded that there are no definitions of Reality: we have to accept that Reality may not conform to our prejudices and, if an otherwise successful theory predicts what we do not believe in, no gedankenexperiment will help because our biases may slither through. Only actual experiments could assist in solving Einstein’s dilemma, as has been proven in the last 50 years. Notwithstanding, EPR is one of the most influential papers in history and has immensely sparked both conceptual and technological progress. Part III of this series further develops QT/TOPI, while scrutinizing the mythical ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’, as well as the ‘Basis’ and ‘Measurement’ pseudo-problems [9]. Part IV introduces QR/TOPI: a new theory that solves the century-old problem of integrating Special Relativity with Quantum Theory [10]. (shrink)

In the Bayesian approach to quantum mechanics, probabilities—and thus quantum states—represent an agent’s degrees of belief, rather than corresponding to objective properties of physical systems. In this paper we investigate the concept of certainty in quantum mechanics. Particularly, we show how the probability-1 predictions derived from pure quantum states highlight a fundamental difference between our Bayesian approach, on the one hand, and Copenhagen and similar interpretations on the other. We first review the main arguments for the (...) general claim that probabilities always represent degrees of belief. We then argue that a quantum state prepared by some physical device always depends on an agent’s prior beliefs, implying that the probability-1 predictions derived from that state also depend on the agent’s prior beliefs. Quantum certainty is therefore always some agent’s certainty. Conversely, if facts about an experimental setup could imply agent-independent certainty for a measurement outcome, as in many Copenhagen-like interpretations, that outcome would effectively correspond to a preexisting system property. The idea that measurement outcomes occurring with certainty correspond to preexisting system properties is, however, in conflict with locality. We emphasize this by giving a version of an argument of Stairs [(1983). Quantum logic, realism, and value-definiteness. Philosophy of Science, 50, 578], which applies the Kochen–Specker theorem to an entangled bipartite system. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

The success of a few theories in statistical thermodynamics can be correlated with their selectivity to reality. These are the theories of Boltzmann, Gibbs, end Einstein. The starting point is Carnot’s theory, which defines implicitly the general selection of reality relevant to thermodynamics. The three other theories share this selection, but specify it further in detail. Each of them separates a few main aspects within the scope of the implicit thermodynamic reality. Their success grounds on that selection. Those aspects can (...) be represented by corresponding oppositions. These are: macroscopic – microscopic; elements – states; relational – non-relational; and observable – theoretical. They can be interpreted as axes of independent qualities constituting a common qualitative reference frame shared by those theories. Each of them can be situated in this reference frame occupying a different place. This reference frame can be interpreted as an additional selection of reality within Carnot’s initial selection describable as macroscopic and both observable and theoretical. The deduced reference frame refers implicitly to many scientific theories independent of their subject therefore defining a general and common space or subspace for scientific theories (not for all). The immediate conclusion is: The examples of a few statistical thermodynamic theories demonstrate that the concept of “reality” is changed or generalized, or even exemplified (i.e. “de-generalized”) from a theory to another. Still a few more general suggestions referring the scientific realism debate can be added: One can admit that reality in scientific theories is some partially shared common qualitative space or subspace describable by relevant oppositions and rather independent of their subject quite different in general. Many or maybe all theories can be situated in that space of reality, which should develop adding new dimensions in it for still newer and newer theories. Its division of independent subspaces can represent the many-realities conception. The subject of a theory determines some relevant subspace of reality. This represents a selection within reality, relevant to the theory in question. The success of that theory correlates essentially with the selection within reality, relevant to its subject. (shrink)

The famous EPR article of 1935 challenged the completeness of quantum mechanics and spurred decades of theoretical and experimental research into the foundations of quantum theory. A crowning achievement of this research is the demonstration that nature cannot in general consist in noncontextual pre-measurement properties that uniquely determine possible measurement outcomes, through experimental violations of Bell inequalities and Kochen-Specker theorems. In this article, I reconstruct an argument from Niels Bohr’s writings that the reality of the Einstein-Planck-de Broglie (...) relations alone implies that no such properties can exist for momentum and position measurements, show how this argument responds to the challenge of EPR on general physical grounds, and advance that this reconstruction shows that and how Bohr’s “complementarity” is a view of the objective content and logic of quantum theory. (shrink)

The paper discusses the origin of dark matter and dark energy from the concepts of time and the totality in the final analysis. Though both seem to be rather philosophical, nonetheless they are postulated axiomatically and interpreted physically, and the corresponding philosophical transcendentalism serves heuristically. The exposition of the article means to outline the “forest for the trees”, however, in an absolutely rigorous mathematical way, which to be explicated in detail in a future paper. The “two deductions” are two successive (...) stage of a single conclusion mentioned above. The concept of “transcendental invariance” meaning ontologically and physically interpreting the mathematical equivalence of the axiom of choice and the well-ordering “theorem” is utilized again. Then, time arrow is a corollary from that transcendental invariance, and in turn, it implies quantum information conservation as the Noether correlate of the linear “increase of time” after time arrow. Quantum information conservation implies a few fundamental corollaries such as the “conservation of energy conservation” in quantum mechanics from reasons quite different from those in classical mechanics and physics as well as the “absence of hidden variables” (versus Einstein’s conjecture) in it. However, the paper is concentrated only into the inference of another corollary from quantum information conservation, namely, dark matter and dark energy being due to entanglement, and thus and in the final analysis, to the conservation of quantum information, however observed experimentally only on the “cognitive screen” of “Mach’s principle” in Einstein’s general relativity. therefore excluding any other source of gravitational field than mass and gravity. Then, if quantum information by itself would generate a certain nonzero gravitational field, it will be depicted on the same screen as certain masses and energies distributed in space-time, and most presumably, observable as those dark energy and dark matter predominating in the universe as about 96% of its energy and matter quite unexpectedly for physics and the scientific worldview nowadays. Besides on the cognitive screen of general relativity, entanglement is available necessarily on still one “cognitive screen” (namely, that of quantum mechanics), being furthermore “flat”. Most probably, that projection is confinement, a mysterious and ad hoc added interaction along with the fundamental tree ones of the Standard model being even inconsistent to them conceptually, as far as it need differ the local space from the global space being definable only as a relation between them (similar to entanglement). So, entanglement is able to link the gravity of general relativity to the confinement of the Standard model as its projections of the “cognitive screens” of those two fundamental physical theories. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that the (alleged) indeterminism of quantum mechanics, claimed by adherents of the Copenhagen interpretation since Born (1926), can be proved from Chaitin's follow-up to Goedel's (first) incompleteness theorem. In comparison, Bell's (1964) theorem as well as the so-called free will theorem-originally due to Heywood and Redhead (1983)-left two loopholes for deterministic hidden variable theories, namely giving up either locality (more precisely: local contextuality, as in Bohmian mechanics) or free choice (...) (i.e. uncorrelated measurement settings, as in 't Hooft's cellular automaton interpretation of quantum mechanics). The main point is that Bell and others did not exploit the full empirical content of quantum mechanics, which consists of long series of outcomes of repeated measurements (idealized as infinite binary sequences): their arguments only used the long-run relative frequencies derived from such series, and hence merely asked hidden variable theories to reproduce single-case Born probabilities defined by certain entangled bipartite states. If we idealize binary outcome strings of a fair quantum coin flip as infinite sequences, quantum mechanics predicts that these typically (i.e. almost surely) have a property called 1-randomness in logic, which is much stronger than uncomputability. This is the key to my claim, which is admittedly based on a stronger (yet compelling) notion of determinism than what is common in the literature on hidden variable theories. (shrink)

We propose an approach to the question of how qualia fit into the physical world, in the context of a relational and realist completion of quantum theory, called the causal theory of views\cite{views}. This is a combination of an approach to a dynamics of discrete causal structures, called energetic causal sets, developed with M. Cortes, with a realist approach to quantum foundations, called the real ensemble formulation. In this theory, the beables are the information available at each event (...) from its causal past, such as its causal predessesors and the energy and momentum they transfer to the event. We call this the view of an event. That is, we describe a causal universe that is composed of a set of partial views of itself. We propose that conscious perceptions are aspects of some views. This addresses the problem of why consciousness always involves awareness of a bundled grouping of qualia that define a momentary self. This gives a restricted form of panpsychism defined by a physically based selection principle which selects which views have experiential aspects. We further propose that only those views which are novel, in the sense that they are not duplicates of the view of any event in the event's own causal past, are the physical correlates of conscious experience. (shrink)

The article is devoted to quantum information (including its subdomains, namely: quantum communication, quantum computer, quantum cryptography), and its philosophical meaning. Paradox EPR, Bell’s inequality, phenomena of teleportation are discussed of a philosophical point of view. Quantum mechanical nonlocal correlations are interpreted as topological inseparabilities. Information is considered both as a fundamental physical quantity and as a philosophical category.

The success of any election depends on whether it was free and fair both to the candidates and the voters. Due to media coverage of national elections locally, regionally and globally, subtle psychological cues have become popular and are being used in student Representative Council (SRC) elections to harness voter preferences. This study focused on investigating the relationship between subtle psychological cues and voter preferences among university of Zimbabwe students. More so, the study was focused on four operationally defined subtle (...) psychological cues namely Ballot order effects, Hallo effects, Negativity bias and Push polls on whether they would influence the participant’s voter preference. The study takes the form of an experimental research design and is based on a sample of 80 purposefully selected participants. In addition, primary data was gathered using 4 ballot papers with a Likert scale and was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Studies (SPSS) version 23. Descriptive statistics, T-tests for independent samples, Chi-square tests and Pearson correlation were computed to establish the degree of the relationship between the variables in question. Results show that of the four subtle psychological cues under investigation, negativity bias and hallo effects were predominantly popular due to the American presidential debates such as that of Richard Nixon against Kennedy and Barack Obama against Hilary Clinton. In addition the results show no statistically significant group differences on how gender, ethnicity and year of study affected voter preferences. Ultimately, there were three positive correlations for the experiments Ballot order effects, Hallo effects and Negativity bias. However, contrary to the reviewed literature there was a negative correlation between Push polls and voter preferences. The conclusion was that there is statistically significant relationship between subtle psychological cues and voter preferences and hence have the potential to increase or decrease the votes a candidate obtains. Therefore, the University can closely monitor SRC elections and make sure the students do not abuse psychological cues such as negativity bias and push polls as they have the potential of ruining the student’s reputations. Also the organisation can add to its current SRC election policies the strategies that were implemented in this study to hold other factors at a constant such as using butterfly ballot paper ordering to help make the free and fair. (shrink)

The paper is a continuation of another paper published as Part I. Now, the case of “n=3” is inferred as a corollary from the Kochen and Specker theorem (1967): the eventual solutions of Fermat’s equation for “n=3” would correspond to an admissible disjunctive division of qubit into two absolutely independent parts therefore versus the contextuality of any qubit, implied by the Kochen – Specker theorem. Incommensurability (implied by the absence of hidden variables) is considered as dual to quantum contextuality. (...) The relevant mathematical structure is Hilbert arithmetic in a wide sense, in the framework of which Hilbert arithmetic in a narrow sense and the qubit Hilbert space are dual to each other. A few cases involving set theory are possible: (1) only within the case “n=3” and implicitly, within any next level of “n” in Fermat’s equation; (2) the identification of the case “n=3” and the general case utilizing the axiom of choice rather than the axiom of induction. If the former is the case, the application of set theory and arithmetic can remain disjunctively divided: set theory, “locally”, within any level; and arithmetic, “globally”, to all levels. If the latter is the case, the proof is thoroughly within set theory. Thus, the relevance of Yablo’s paradox to the statement of Fermat’s last theorem is avoided in both cases. The idea of “arithmetic mechanics” is sketched: it might deduce the basic physical dimensions of mechanics (mass, time, distance) from the axioms of arithmetic after a relevant generalization, Furthermore, a future Part III of the paper is suggested: FLT by mediation of Hilbert arithmetic in a wide sense can be considered as another expression of Gleason’s theorem in quantum mechanics: the exclusions about (n = 1, 2) in both theorems as well as the validity for all the rest values of “n” can be unified after the theory of quantum information. The availability (respectively, non-availability) of solutions of Fermat’s equation can be proved as equivalent to the non-availability (respectively, availability) of a single probabilistic measure as to Gleason’s theorem. (shrink)